The value of a comfortably untidy house

The kids and I drove to Alabama this week to visit family and friends. I was the sole driver (and adult) in the car for those 1500 round-trip miles … It was a lot of audio books, pretty much continual snacking, and — let's be honest — more DVD-watching than my crew normally gets in a month. Gotta pull out the big guns for a venture like this. But the trip was so worth it. And we fared pretty well overall. Among the CDs we listened to was "

The kids and I drove to Alabama this week to visit family and friends. I was the sole driver (and adult) in the car for those 1500 round-trip miles … It was a lot of audio books, pretty much continual snacking, and — let's be honest — more DVD-watching than my crew normally gets in a month. Gotta pull out the big guns for a venture like this. But the trip was so worth it. And we fared pretty well overall. Among the CDs we listened to was "Ramona's World," one of the half dozen or so Beverly Cle…